Damaged Long Ago
by BonesBird
Summary: 20 years of anger, blame and hurt have torn apart a family, but it only takes minutes to put it back together again.


**Title: Damaged Long Ago  
Summary: 20 years of anger, blame and hurt have torn apart a family, but it only takes minutes to put it back together again.  
Lyrics: New Found Glory – My Friends Over You**

**This was very strange and unexpected. I'm not entirely sure how or why it was inspired, it just was. The acoustic version of this song was playing (go on youtube and type "My friends over you acoustic live in London" to find the exact version). This is just a little oneshot, hopefully, I make it uplifting enough that the death in my future will be greatly diminished (I'm looking at PA and Jek here). Read and Review, as always.**

**Shin**

* * *

_**You were everything I wanted  
But I just can't finish what I started  
There's no room left here on my back  
It was damaged long ago**_

* * *

The voice rang out through the courtyard in her mind, exactly as it had 20 years earlier. "Mom, you could have stopped it, you could have saved him" she had spat at her, over and over as the years had passed. The anger in her eyes had never lessened, and the guilt in B'Elanna's had never lifted. She didn't know what the Zukarans had wanted from her initially, not until long after the incident, but that hadn't stopped them pursuing her, and it hadn't stopped them taking the one thing that had mattered most to her. They had taken her family.

"Did you listen to the reports, it wasn't my fault" she shouted again, no longer sure if she was trying to convince her daughter or herself. The words sounded hollow and meaningless. She bolted upright in the bed, drenched and tangled in the bedclothes. It took a minute for her to realise she was in her apartment in San Francisco, minutes away from the hospital where her husband had spent the last 20 years of their lives, minutes away from the daughter and grandson she'd never know, because of the mistaken actions she'd once taken.

The nightmares had been happening ever since. They never left her. Either her final moments with the man she had married, whom she had loved for as long as she could remember, or the soul crushing final conversation with her daughter that she had had at the age of 18. Everything she had ever wanted had been in the two of them, her hopes and dreams were contained in the two people she loved more than life itself.

Tossing and turning seemed like a waste of time, as did sleeping, or eating. The only thing she wanted to do was go and sit with Tom. Listen to his mumblings, the small glimpses she got into the world he had spent his last 20 years living in. His occasional lucid moments coming infrequently, always just long enough to remind her why she went there every day. Why she sat there and read to him, or sang to him.

She had left Starfleet the day he was rescued, and she had never gone back. She had taken the small apartment near Starfleet medical _"until Tom recovered"_. She looked towards the building that housed Medical's long term wards. Taking a step out into the brisk air, she pulled the jacket tighter about her. As she had every day for so long, she put one foot in front of the other, not even needing to concentrate on the walk, she knew the way to Tom's bed in her sleep. The nurses let her through, used to her occasionally falling asleep in his room, listening to the sound of his breathing when he was unconscious.

The room wasn't empty, and sat there beside her father was Miral. The flash of anger B'Elanna was accustomed to seeing in her eyes was surprisingly absent. Instead there was a tear, and as Miral stroked her father's head she stared into the distance, neither looking at nor looking away from B'Elanna.

"He thought I was you, when he woke up a little while ago. He thought I was you and he was talking. Telling me how much he loved you. How much he wanted more children. He thought I was still 5 years old"

"He always wanted two or three" she smiled, remembering all the conversations they'd had over the years, when she'd been pregnant, when Miral had been a baby, all those times before their world was torn apart.

"He loves you so much, and I just listened to him. To how much he loved our family, to everything he wanted me to be, everything he wanted" Miral's voice caught in her throat, and B'Elanna could sense the pain that was building behind her eyes "I wasted so much time being angry at you because he wasn't the father he'd always been. I blamed you for that" she laid her hand on top of her daughters as she moved around the foot of the bed, shaking her head as her voice caught.

"You had every right too" She said through the pain in her throat, the tears in her eyes. This moment was the breakthrough for the two of them. She knew, and as she felt Tom's soft breathing through her palm, she felt the most connected to her daughter she had in as long as she could remember.

"No, I didn't. It wasn't your fault, I've always known it wasn't your fault" she swallowed, B'Elanna felt the fingers close around her. "I needed someone to blame, because that was easier than accepting it." Miral's tears fell thick and fast "when he fell asleep again, I sat here thinking how devastated I'd be it Gene didn't speak to me for almost 20 years. If all I got from my child was anger and hostility." B'Elanna knelt down and wiped away the moisture from under Miral's eyes. "I think it's time I forgive. I've wasted 20 years, years I could have spent learning about you and dad, and the history the two of you had, I wasted them being angry."

She couldn't listen any more, she wrapped her arms round her daughter, and held her as she felt the tears begin to fall. It didn't take long for her to be crying too. Their arms wrapped around each other.

"Oh look. There's my girls. See, I was telling you they'd be right here." Tom smiled into the distance, indicating his wife and daughter to a person they couldn't see. B'Elanna kept hold of her daughters' hand, and they watched as Tom drifted back into a comfortable slumber.

"Mom, would you like to come and meet your grandson?" B'Elanna smiled at her daughter and nodded, two overcome to say anything. Even after 20 years, the man of her dreams could still fix everything, even without meaning to.


End file.
